


Five (and a bit) Times Helen Cutter’s Plans Did Not Go Smooth

by Prochytes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Primeval, Sanctuary (TV), Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of a transtemporal Machiavelli is not always a bed of roses. Helen Cutter is a clever and manipulative individual, who knows what is really going on. But she isn’t the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five (and a bit) Times Helen Cutter’s Plans Did Not Go Smooth

**Author's Note:**

> Serious spoilers for Primeval to the end of S2. Small ones for Sanctuary 1x07: “The Five”; BtVS S6; and Torchwood 1x01 “Everything Changes”. Originally posted on LJ in 2009.

1\. The Sussex Downs, 1964.

Lester might (or might not) have been amused to learn that he was not the only Sir James to have put impediments in Helen Cutter’s path.

“Anomalies that permit of practical time-travel? Fascinating.” Sir James Watson bit into a macaroon. “I had speculated as much, but the confirmation reassures. It is ever a capital offense to theorize excessively in the absence of data.”

Helen shrugged, and wondered privately when the man in the steampunk exoskeleton would give her the chance to “do up her boot-lace”.

“I have rarely known a Helen who fell far below her mythic exemplar in beauty and guile. I see before me now no exception. But you must own it an act of hubris to have used your ‘anomalies’ to make an attempt on this facility, when their radio signature is so obvious. Radio, my dear Helen? The Five practically invented it.” He reached for the teapot. “In fact, one of us did.”

“What happens now, then?” Helen kept her tone carefully neutral.

“Well, there are two alternative lines of play. In the first, we polish off this rather delectable repast and you then leave this Sanctuary, never to return, without the neural clamp technology on which you had set your heart. In the second, you bend down, ostensibly to do up your lace but really to pull out the knife which you flatter yourself I have not noticed in your right boot – at which point, my dear Helen, I am afraid that I would no longer be able to guarantee your safety. Can I tempt you to another macaroon?”

  
2\. Sunnydale, California, 2001.

On reflection, it would have made sense to do a bit more research on the body of folklore that surrounded the “persistent anomaly” in California _before_ going to visit it.

Helen surveyed her latest pair of captors, and toyed with the explanation that Nick’s tagalong with the fingerless gloves had previously devised some male equivalent to parthenogenesis (the idea that he might ever actually have sex was too horrible to contemplate). She counterfeited a winning smile.

“There doesn’t have to be any trouble. Just let me have the dinosaur, and…”

“You are _way_ behind the game, sister. That ‘dinosaur’? It’s a demon. One of my breeding stock.” A pause for thought. “Unless it’s like, a dinosaur _and_ a demon. An actual Devil Dinosaur! That would be so coo…”

“Stop talking now, Andrew.”

“Sorry, Warren.”

Helen transferred her attention to the new speaker. Ah, yes. His kind was always easy to spot: a nasty little man, driving a plot too big for him. Leek had shown that such men had their uses. Just as long as you jumped off the ride before it crashed. Her smile widened.

“I’m sure that we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

“Leave us, Andrew.”

“But Warren…”

“Mummy and Daddy have grown-up things to discuss.”

She didn’t acquire the dinosaur (demon? Who knew?). But some judicious flashing of her Twenty-Third century wonder-tech and Twenty-First century wonder-bra at least got her out in one piece, complete with a resolution never to skimp the necessary groundwork in future.

(On the subject of the future, one peripheral pleasure of life as a temporal nomad lay in plotting the migratory patterns of chickens coming home to roost. A long time afterwards, while scavenging in the Greater London Crater, Helen found documents relating to the career of Warren Mears. His toys hadn’t saved his skin.)

  
3… Cardiff, 2008.

The gap between the Welshwoman’s teeth put Helen in mind of some interesting ruminants she had encountered, in the Ypresian era of the Eocene. Helen judged it inexpedient to mention this, however. Especially as she was not the one with the bullets.

She found herself oddly reminded of her ex-husband. It was so Nick, the way this woman wore sanctimony like a sheriff’s tin star. Helen could see the gimcrack glint of their moral outrage coming a mile off. What she had failed to see coming, unfortunately, was a right hook like the business end of an ankylosaurus. (She really did need to remember that the useful little Twenty-First century taboo on hitting women did not hold for other women. This was pertinent to the handling of that poorly house-trained blonde bimbette Nick had picked up from somewhere, as well.)

Impressive punch notwithstanding, Helen believed that she could have taken the self-righteous little baggage, but the Welshwoman had shown irritating forethought in bringing a gun to the fistfight. Helen wiped the blood from her split lip, and decided on a change of tactics. She leaned forward.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing. You have no idea what the future holds, if you don’t let me…”

“Save the ambiguous prophecies.” The Welshwoman cocked her gun, and smiled. “I’m Torchwood, see? Ambiguous prophecies are my boss’s bread and butter. And you wouldn’t want to see what he can do with bread and butter. Also, you might as well put those away before you catch a chill. Where I work, sweetheart, the _tech support_ could out-cleavage you.”

It was just Helen’s luck, she reflected, to come up against the only member of that annoying organization who wasn’t even a little bit bi.

  
… and a bit. New Birmingham, 2267.

  
(Eight months or, from another perspective, two hundred and fifty-nine years later, Helen did, in fact, cross paths with the Welshwoman’s boss, although she never got to see what he could do with bread (no more cereal crops) or butter (no more cows). It was amusing to taunt him with this chronal disparity, to point out that Helen’s own brief memories of lilting sarcasm and a gappy grin were now so much fresher than his. But it didn’t made his gun-hand waver.)

  
4\. Ealing, London, 2007.

Sometimes Helen thought that the Holy Grail would have been an easier ask than the neural clamp technology.

Take Two at procuring it had achieved precisely nothing, besides further reinforcing her lifelong aversion to lipstick. It was bad enough that bright lipstick was the trademark of that painted Jezebel with whom she had accidentally replaced Claudia Brown. (“Painted Jezebel”, indeed. Who would have expected her inner voice to be such a traditionalist?)

It was much worse to learn the hard way that the question “Surely you’ll permit a prisoner the solace of a little lippy?” could be the transition point between an overture of innocuous prattle (“Nice outfit. Did you ever happen to meet an old friend of mine, all curls and scarf and teeth, on your travels? With that leather and the knife, the two of you would have got on like a house on fire.”) and the crashing chords of your master-plan self-destructing (“Luke, NOW!”). Also, the mouthy boy had stolen her apple.

Helen did not feel that it accorded with her dignity to be the sort of person who would have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.

  
5\. London, 2008.

  
And finally, there was Stephen. Of course. Dear Stephen, whose penchant for dumb heroics had exceeded rational calculation.

The error would not be repeated.

FINIS


End file.
